Shopify is a company that has close to 2,000 employees, and four offices in Canada and one in the U.S. We support entrepreneurs and SMBs in over 175 countries worldwide. For a company that has seen 100% growth year on year, the topic we're talking about today is absolutely crucial for our growth and success.
I lead a team of about 200 highly skilled designers, writers, researchers, and developers at Shopify, and I'll speak to some of the barriers that I've seen exist for the women around me.
The first is return to work and workplace integration after maternity leave. Access and costs of child care remain a critical barrier to women's economic security. In our company alone, a number of women have faced serious challenges returning to work, as a result of child care availability and the financial hardship incurred. As a result of the recently introduced child care rules, the number of children a day care centre or individual can take is limited for safety. The unintended result of this is that the availability of day care facilities has decreased, while costs have increased.
For example, many day care facilities will not take children until they're 14 or 18 months old, making it nearly impossible for women to return to the workplace before this. This timeline does not line up with company maternity policies, leaving women relying on family to bridge this gap for them.
Costs of child care are high—on average, $30K per child per year in Toronto, or $26K per child per year in Ottawa—making the return to work an impossibility for lower-income women and a significant challenge even for higher-income women.
The lowered capacity for day care providers has led to women on our team needing to sign up for waiting lists when they're three months pregnant, leaving absolutely zero flexibility for the woman to move house, job, or location in the early years of their child's life. Mobility is a need for modern careers, and this lack of mobility leads to devastating consequences for that woman's ability to advance her career while growing her family at the same time. We've seen this first hand when headhunting senior women: they're often not willing to move their families due to the high cost of losing their support networks, while knowing the difficulty involved in reintegration. The same problem does not exist to the same degree for men, who frequently move their families for job opportunities at Shopify.
Infant and child sickness is another frequent reason for employees to take time off. If any company isn't open to working from home or where sick days are limited, there's no question that women are sidelined as a result of this incompatibility between workplace and child care expectations.
Women on our team have told me it was very difficult for them to even find child care when interviewing to come back to work after taking leave. Our interviews are typically full-day events, so it's not easy or cheap for women to accommodate this. More recently we've begun paying for the child care needs of women we invite to interview, but most companies do not.
The truth is that while, for most parents, both face barriers to work as a result of family commitments, it is still the woman who experiences the full consequences. If this is to be truly addressed, the government needs to put in place a framework for child care that is not only safe, but affordable and accessible too.
When it comes to hiring and income gap, we frequently see women reporting lower base salaries despite their talents and experience. We've worked hard internally to define salary bands that ensure we pay correctly for the role, regardless, but most companies do not. We know women today still struggle to fight for the correct level of pay, and if companies still choose to hire women at lower salary levels, this ensures that women's salaries will remain lower.
When it comes to interviewing, we see many unconscious biases come into play. Almost every interviewer at Shopify has received some sort of training to make them aware of these unconscious biases, and every interview panel openly discusses possible biases when we get together to recap a candidate's next steps. We're highly aware of these biases, and even we are struggling to overcome them day to day. It remains difficult for women to overcome the systemic biases of how they're required to act by society's standards. All this to say, in comparison with other companies, we've invested significantly in educating ourselves and the people around us about these biases and our problems are still not solved. Imagine how difficult it might be for a woman to be hired or advance in a company where these things are not in place.
Lastly, concerning advancement of women in the workplace, for the most part it's still women that I see as the primary champions of other women. In my experience, female-led teams are much more likely to hire and promote females. Technology professionals are in high demand, and senior females tell me that they won't even consider a company that doesn't feature women in high profile or senior positions.
Professional development opportunities like training or conferences frequently happen over the weekend and can be particularly challenging for those with families. Shopify runs a conference that features female-led speaker lineups called Beyond the Code. We offer free child care for attendees, alongside some other inclusive conferences run by others in Canada.
Showcasing, mentorship, and sponsorship of high potential women have been successful methods for us to highlight and advance women in the company. They give a platform to those who don't necessarily feel they're entitled to one, despite high quality work. As a fast-growing company, we've seen the need for coaching internally to help us develop the leadership skills we need. I can personally attribute a lot of my personal growth to the focus of a coach who has been able to provide me with a lot of the focus as I've moved into a VP position.
So today I've mainly spoken about the barriers that I see internally at Shopify when it comes to female economic security, but I also see these manifest in the female entrepreneurs who our business supports. Our customer base has changed a lot over the last couple of years, from a male majority to a female majority. This reflects some of the opportunities that are being opened up to women through the Shopify platform, when it comes to lowering the cost of running a business, as well as making it easier to get started. But despite the shift in our customer numbers, this is by no means a solved problem. We still see the most successful businesses on the platform being run by males, indicating that a ceiling still exists for female entrepreneurs.
As we've seen first hand, addressing the barrier to female inclusion and advancement in the workplace requires a long-term time and monetary investment. There's still a huge role for government to play in ensuring that, whether we're referring to women who are starting their own businesses or working within the technology industry, they have the support and backing of the Canadian government.
Thank you.